The Anglo-Gallic treatise of Alexander Neckam _De Utensilibus_ (twelfth century) is differently constructed from the Alfric Vocabulary, not as regards the text itself, which is also in Latin, but in having an interlinear gloss in Old French, and in following a descriptive form. It takes the various parts of a dwelling _seriatim_, the several occupations and callings of men, the mode of laying out a garden, and of building a castle. Perhaps the book by Neckam and the Dictionary of Johannes de Garlandia constitute together the most comprehensive and remarkable body of information in our literature respecting the life and habits of the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans. Johannes de Garlandia, whose work is common in MS. and who is also known as the author of other productions of a philological cast, commences his Dictionary by defining what a dictionary is. "Dictionarius," says he, "dicitur libellus iste a dictionibus magis necessariis, quas tenetur quilibet scolaris, non tantum in scrinio de linguis facto, sed in cordis armariolo firmiter retinere, ut ad faciliorem oracionis constructionem perveniat. Primo igitur sciat vulgaria nominare. Placet igitur a membris humani corporis incoare...." This phrase or word book, which was probably composed about 1220, enters into the most minute particulars under all the heads which it comprises, and is unquestionably of the highest value and interest as taking us back so far into the life of the past, and making us in a manner the contemporary of an Englishman who flourished six or seven centuries ago, and domiciled himself in France, chiefly at Paris, where he gives us an account of his house and garden, with all their appointments and incidence. There is a very curious passage in one of the glosses, where Johannes explains the derivation of _Pes_, which he traces from the Greek _pos_ [_sic_], adding that thence the dwellers of the other world or hemisphere, _if it be true that there are any_, are termed Antipodes. As this was written nearly 300 years before Columbus, it might have supplied a note and a point to Mr. Beamish in his volume on the _Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century_, 1841. The old dictionary-maker brings us so near to him by his pleasant colloquial method and familiar way of putting everything, and expects us to become acquainted into the bargain with his friends and neighbours, who resided at Paris under Philip Augustus, as if one might go there and find some of them still living. In other words, there was belonging to this man a natural simplicity of style and a communicativeness which together have rendered his treatise a work of art and a cyclopædia of information. He even leaves his house to go into the market with you and shew what his neighbour William has on sale there! How unspeakably more luminous and understandable the gone ages might have been if we had had more such!